A USB flash drive consists of a NAND-type flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (universal serial bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, much smaller than a floppy disk (1 to 4 inches or 2.5 to 10 cm), and weigh less than 2 ounces (56 g)^{[citation needed]}. Storage capacities typically range from 64 MB to 64 GB^[1] with steady improvements in size and price per gigabyte. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles^[2][3] and have 10-year data retention,^[4] connected by USB 1.1 or USB 2.0.

USB flash drives offer potential advantages over other portable storage devices, particularly the floppy disk. They have a more compact shape, operate faster, hold much more data, have a more durable design, and operate more reliably due to their lack of moving parts. Additionally, it has become increasingly common for computers to ship without floppy disk drives. USB ports, on the other hand, appear on almost every current^[update] mainstream PC and laptop. These types of drives use the USB mass storage standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other Unix-like systems. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can also operate faster than an optical disc drive, while storing a larger amount of data in a much smaller space.

Nothing actually moves in a flash drive: the term drive persists because computers read and write flash-drive data using the same system commands as for a mechanical disk drive, with the storage appearing to the computer operating system and user interface as just another drive.^[3]

A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberised case, robust enough for carrying with no additional protection—in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. The USB connector is protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not liable to be damaged if exposed. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing plugging into a port on a personal computer.

Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with the low cost, low power consumption and small size made possible by recent^[update] advances in microprocessor technology. The memory storage is based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had very limited capacity, were very slow for both reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could only be re-written after erasing the entire contents of the chip.

Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved first copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field, and then re-writing the data back into the same field, making the necessary alteration to the relevant memory location while doing so. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this.

The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB for the first time made memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access also greatly reduced the number of electrical connections required for the memory chips, which has allowed the successful manufacture of multi-gigabyte capacities. (Every external electrical connection is a potential source of manufacturing failure, and with traditional manufacturing, a point is rapidly reached where the successful yield approaches zero).

Computers access modern^[update] flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above.

Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive.

Trek Technology and IBM began selling the first USB flash drives commercially in 2000. Singaporean company Trek Technology sold a model dubbed the "ThumbDrive," and IBM marketed the first such drives in North America, with its product the "DiskOnKey" (which was manufactured by M-Systems). IBM's USB flash drive became available December 15, 2000^[5][6], and had a storage capacity of 8 MB, more than five times the capacity of the (at the time) commonly used floppy disks.

In 2000 Lexar introduced a Compact Flash (CF) card with a USB connection, and a companion card read/writer and USB cable that eliminated the need for a USB hub.

In 2004 Trek Technology brought several lawsuits against other USB flash drive manufacturers and distributors in an attempt to assert its patent rights to the USB flash drive. A court in Singapore ordered competitors to cease selling similar products^[7] that would be covered by Trek's patent, but a court in the United Kingdom revoked^[8] one of Trek's patents in that country.

Modern flash drives have USB 2.0 connectivity. However, they do not currently use the full 480 Mbit/s (60MB/s) the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed specification supports due to technical limitations inherent in NAND flash. The fastest drives currently available use a dual channel controller, although they still fall considerably short of the transfer rate possible from a current generation hard disk, or the maximum high speed USB throughput.

Typical overall file transfer speeds vary considerably, and should be checked before purchase; speeds may be given in megabytes or megabits per second. Typical fast drives claim to read at up to 30 megabytes/s (MB/s) and write at about half that. Older "USB full speed" 12 megabit/s devices are limited to a maximum of about 1 MB/s.

One end of the device is fitted with a single male type-A USB connector. Inside the plastic casing is a small printed circuit board. Mounted on this board is some simple power circuitry and a small number of surface-mounted integrated circuits (ICs). Typically, one of these ICs provides an interface to the USB port, another drives the onboard memory, and the other is the flash memory.

Drives typically use the USB mass storage device class to communicate with the host.

There are typically four parts to a flash drive:

• Male type-A USB connector – provides an interface to the host computer.
• USB mass storage controller – implements the USB host controller. The controller contains a small microcontroller with a small amount of on-chip ROM and RAM.
• NAND flash memory chip – stores data. NAND flash is typically also used in digital cameras.
• Crystal oscillator – produces the device's main 12 MHz clock signal and controls the device's data output through a phase-locked loop.

The typical device may also include:

• Jumpers and test pins – for testing during the flash drive's manufacturing or loading code into the microprocessor.
• LEDs – indicate data transfers or data reads and writes.
• Write-protect switches – indicate whether the device should be in "write-protection" mode.
• Unpopulated space – provides space to include a second memory chip. Having this second space allows the manufacturer to develop only one printed circuit board that can be used for more than one storage size device, to meet the needs of the market.
• USB connector cover or cap – reduces the risk of damage and prevents the ingress of fluff or other contaminants, and improves overall device appearance. Some flash drives do not feature a cap, but instead have retractable USB connectors. Other flash drives have a "swivel" cap that is permanently connected to the drive itself and eliminates the chance of losing the cap.
• Transport aid – the cap or the main body often contains a hole suitable for connection to a key chain or lanyard.
• Some drives offer expandable storage via an internal memory card slot, much like a memory card reader.^[9][10]

Some manufacturers differentiate their products by using elaborate housings, which are often bulky and make the drive difficult to connect to the USB port. Because the USB port connectors on a computer housing are often closely spaced, plugging a flash drive into a USB port may block an adjacent port. Such devices may only carry the USB logo if sold with a separate extension cable.

USB flash drives have been integrated into other commonly-carried items such as watches, pens, and even the Swiss Army Knife; others have been fitted with novelty cases such as toy cars or LEGO bricks. The small size, robustness and cheapness of USB flash drives make them an increasingly popular peripheral for case modding.

Heavy or bulky flash drive packaging can make for unreliable operation when plugged directly into a USB port; this can be relieved by a USB extension cable. Such cables are USB-compatible, but do not conform to the USB 1.0 standard. ^{[11] [12]}

Most flash drives ship preformatted with the FAT or FAT 32 file system. The ubiquity of this file system allows the drive to be accessed on virtually any host device with USB support. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e.g. ScanDisk) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data. However, because a flash drive appears as a USB-connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by the host operating system.

Flash drives can be defragmented, but this brings little advantage as there is no mechanical head slowed down by having to move from fragment to fragment (flash drives often have very large internal sector size, especially when erasing so defragmenting means accessing fewer sectors to erase a file). Defragmenting shortens the life of the drive by making many unnecessary writes.[2]

Some file systems are designed to distribute usage over an entire memory device without concentrating usage on any part (e.g., for a directory); this prolongs life of simple flash memory devices. Some USB flash drives, however, have this functionality built into the controller to prolong device life, while others do not, therefore the end user should check the specifications of his device prior to changing the file system for this reason.[3]

The most common use of flash drives is to transport and store personal files such as documents, pictures and videos. Individuals also store medical alert information on MedicTag flash drives for use in emergencies and for disaster preparation.

With wide deployment(s) of flash drives being used in various environments (secured or otherwise), the issue of data and information security remains of the utmost importance. The use of biometrics and encryption is becoming the norm with the need for increased security for data; OTFE systems such as FreeOTFE and TrueCrypt are particularly useful in this regard, as they can transparently encrypt large amounts of data. In some cases a Secure USB Drive may use a hardware-based encryption mechanism that uses a hardware module instead of software for strongly encrypting data.

Flash drives are particularly popular among system and network administrators, who load them with configuration information and software used for system maintenance, troubleshooting, and recovery.

Flash drives enjoy notable success in the PC repair field as a means to transfer recovery and antivirus software to infected PCs, while allowing a portion of the host machine's data to be archived in case of emergency. As the drives have increased in storage space, they have also replaced the need to carry a number of CD ROMs and installers which were needed when reinstalling or updating a system.

Flash drives are used to carry applications that run on the host computer without requiring installation. While any standalone application can in principle be used this way, many programs store data, configuration information, etc. on the hard drive and registry of the host computer

The U3 company works with drive makers (parent company SanDisk as well as others) to deliver custom versions of applications designed for Microsoft Windows from a special flash drive; U3-compatible devices are designed to autoload a menu when plugged into a computer running Windows. Applications must be modified for the U3 platform and not to leave any data on the host machine. U3 also provides a software framework for ISVs interested in their platform.

Ceedo is an alternative product with the key difference that it does not require Windows applications to be modified in order for them to be carried and run on the drive.

Similarly, other application virtualization solutions, such as VMware ThinApp can be used to run software from a flash drive without installation.

A range of portable applications which are all free of charge and able to run off a computer running Windows without storing anything on the host computer's drives or registry is available from portableapps.com; unlike U3 programs which run from a special U3-compatible USB stick, the PortableApps menu will run from a standard device, and can also use the Windows AutoRun feature.^[13]

A recent development for the use of a USB Flash Drive as an application carrier is to carry the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) application developed by Microsoft. COFEE is a set of applications designed to search for and extract digital evidence on computers confiscated from suspects^[14]. Forensic software should not alter the information stored on the computer being examined in any way; other forensic suites run from CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, but cannot store data on the media they are run from (although they can write to other attached devices such as external drives or memory sticks).

Most current PC firmware permits booting from a USB drive, allowing the launch of an operating system from a bootable flash drive. Such a configuration is known as a Live USB.

While a Live USB could be used for general-purpose applications, size and memory wear make them poor choices compared to alternatives. They are more suited to special-purpose or temporary tasks, such as:

• Loading a minimal, hardened kernel for embedded applications (e.g. network router, firewall).
• Bootstrapping an operating system install or disk cloning operation, often across a network.
• Maintenance tasks, such as virus scanning or low-level data repair, without the primary host operating system loaded.

In Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7, the ReadyBoost feature allows use of some flash drives to augment operating system memory.^[15]

Many companies make small solid-state digital audio players, essentially producing flash drives with sound output and a simple user interface. Examples include the Creative MuVo and the iPod shuffle. Some of these players are true USB flash drives as well as music players; others do not support general-purpose data storage.

Many of the smallest players are powered by a permanently fitted rechargeable battery, charged from the USB interface.

Digital audio files can be transported from one computer to another like any other file, and played on a compatible media player (with caveats for DRM-locked files). In addition, many home Hi-Fi and car stereo head units are now equipped with a USB port. This allows a USB flash drive containing media files in a variety of formats to be played directly on devices which support the format. The files may be ripped from CD or purchased or downloaded online, and there have been some cases of pre-encoded music sold or given away for promotion on USB flash drives:

• In 2004, the German band WIZO made a recording industry first of releasing the "Stick EP", an album available only as a USB drive. In addition to five high-bitrate MP3s, it also included a video, pictures, lyrics, and guitar tablature.
• Third album by Portishead in the limited edition box set.
• Not Here to Please You EP by Hadouken!
• Icky Thump single by White Stripes
• Good Life single by Kanye West^[16]
• X album by Kylie Minogue
• Nine Inch Nails promoted their album Year Zero by hiding USB drives at concerts, usually with content like select songs contained on them.
• Nothing In My Way single by Keane^[17] The 512MB drive was loaded with the audio track, music video, and several extras.
• The Bedlam in Goliath album by The Mars Volta was released on a USB drive shaped like a ouija planchette to coincide with the album's concept. In addition to the music files, the drive can be used to unlock exclusive material on the band's website.
• In 2007, a product known as the MU-STIK appeared in the market, offering a means of packaging music albums by containing all relevant digital audio/video data and a customizable player interface within a USB key.^[18]
• The I Heart Revolution: With Hearts as One album by Hillsong United was released in 2008 on a flash drive embedded in a black rubber wristband. In addition to the music files, the drive included the lyrical overhead master sheets, a PDF copy of the liner sleeve, and the two versions of the album cover.^[19]
• "The 2009 Annual from Ministry of Sound have released a special edition of the album with the songs on a coloured USB Flash Drive.

In the arcade game In the Groove and more commonly In The Groove 2, flash drives are used to transfer high scores, screenshots, dance edits, and combos throughout sessions. As of software revision 21 (R21), players can also store custom songs and play them on any machine on which this feature is enabled. While use of flash drives is common, the drive must be Linux compatible, causing problems for some players.

The availability of inexpensive flash drives has enabled them to be used for promotional and marketing purposes, particularly within technical and computer-industry circles (e.g. technology trade shows). They may be given away for free, sold at less than wholesale price, or included as a bonus with another purchased product.

Usually, such drives will be custom-stamped with a company's logo, as a form of advertising to increase mind share and brand awareness. The drive may be blank drive, or preloaded with graphics, documentation, web links, Flash animation or other multimedia, and free or demonstration software. Some preloaded drives are read-only; others are configured with a read-only and a writeable partition. Dual-partition drives are more expensive.

Flash drives can be set up to autorun stored presentations, websites and articles immediately on insertion of the drive by saving a file called autorun.inf with an appropriate shell script in the root directory of the drive. ^[20] Autoloading this way does not work on all computers; the U3 drives described above load more reliably.

Some value-added resellers are now using a flash drive as part of small-business turnkey solutions (e.g. point-of-sale systems). The drive is used as a backup medium: at the close of business each night, the drive is inserted, and a database backup is saved to the drive. Alternatively, the drive can be left inserted through the business day, and data regularly updated. In either case, the drive is removed at night and taken offsite.

• This is simple for the end-user, and more likely to be done;
• the drive is small and convenient, and more likely to be carried off-site for safety;
• the drives are less fragile mechanically and magnetically than tapes;
• the capacity is often large enough for several backup images of critical data;
• and flash drives are cheaper than many other backup systems.

It is also easy to lose these small devices, and easy for people without a right to data to take illicit backups.

Flash drives are impervious to scratches and dust, and mechanically very robust making them suitable for transporting data from place to place and keeping it readily at hand. Most personal computers support USB as of 2008^[update].

Flash drives also store data relatively densely compared to many removable media. In mid-2008, 64 GB drives became available, with the ability to hold many times more data than a DVD.

Compared to hard drives, flash drives use little power, have no fragile moving parts, and for low capacities are small and light.

Flash drives implement the USB mass storage device class so that most modern operating systems can read and write to them without installing device drivers. The flash drives present a simple block-structured logical unit to the host operating system, hiding the individual complex implementation details of the various underlying flash memory devices. The operating system can use any file system or block addressing scheme. Some computers can boot up from flash drives.

Some flash drives retain their memory even after being submerged in water ^[21], even through a machine wash, although this is not a design feature and not to be relied upon. Leaving the flash drive out to dry completely before allowing current to run through it has been known to result in a working drive with no future problems. Channel Five's Gadget Show cooked a flash drive with propane, froze it with dry ice, submerged it in various acidic liquids, ran over it with a jeep and fired it against a wall with a mortar. A company specializing in recovering lost data from computer drives managed to recover all the data on the drive. ^[22] All data on the other removal storage devices tested, using optical or magnetic technologies, were destroyed.

Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before failure^[23][24]. This should be a consideration when using a flash drive to run application software or an operating system. To address this, as well as space limitations, some developers have produced special versions of operating systems (such as Linux in Live USB) ^[25] or commonplace applications (such as Mozilla Firefox) designed to run from flash drives. These are typically optimized for size and configured to place temporary or intermediate files in the computer's main RAM rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive.

Most USB flash drives do not include a write-protect mechanism, although some have a switch on the housing of the drive itself to keep the host computer from writing or modifying data on the drive. Write-protection makes a device suitable for repairing virus-contaminated host computers without risk of infecting the USB flash drive itself.

A drawback to the small size is that they are easily misplaced, left behind, or otherwise lost. This is a particular problem if the data they contain are sensitive (see data security). As a consequence, some manufacturers have added encryption hardware to their drives -- although software encryption systems achieve the same thing, and are universally available for all USB flash drives. Others just have the possibility of being attached to keychains, necklaces and lanyards.

Compared to other portable storage device, for example external hard drives, USB flash drives have a high price per unit of storage and are only available in comparatively small capacities; but hard drives have a higher minimum price, so in the smaller capacities (4 GB and less), USB flash drives are much less expensive than the smallest available hard drives.^[26]

Audio tape cassettes are no longer used for data storage. High-capacity floppy discs (e.g. Imation SuperDisk), and other forms of drives with removable magnetic media such as the Iomega Zip and Jaz drives are now largely obsolete and rarely used.

The applications of current data tape cartridges hardly overlap those of flash drives: the drives and media are very expensive, have very high capacity, slower transfer speed than most other storage media, and store data sequentially, leading to very long access times. These devices are used for routine backup of large systems.

Floppy disks are rarely fitted to modern computers and are obsolete for normal purposes, although internal and external drives can be fitted if required. Floppy discs may be the method of choice for transferring data to and from very old computers without USB or network support. Computers can usually boot from floppy discs, and so they are sometimes used to change the firmware on, for example, BIOS chips.

The various writable and rewritable forms of CD and DVD are portable storage media supported by the vast majority of computers as of 2008. CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R can be written to only once., RW varieties up to about 1,000 erase/write cycles, while modern NAND-based flash drives often last for 500,000 or more erase/write cycles.^{[citation needed]} DVD-RAM discs are the most suitable optical discs for data storage involving much rewriting.

Optical storage devices are among the cheapest methods of mass data storage after the hard drive. They are slower than their flash-based counterparts. Standard 12 cm optical discs are larger than flash drives and more subject to damage. Smaller optical media do exist, such as business card CD-Rs which have the same dimensions as a credit card, and the slightly less convenient but higher capacity 8 cm recordable CD/DVDs. The small discs are more expensive than the standard size, and do not work in all drives.

Universal Disk Format (UDF) version 1.50 and above has facilities to support rewritable discs like sparing tables and virtual allocation tables, spreading usage over the entire surface of a disc and maximising life, but many older operating systems do not support this format. Packet-writing utilities such as DirectCD and InCD are available but produce discs that are not universally readable (although based on the UDF standard). The Mount Rainier standard addresses this shortcoming in CD-RW media by running the older file systems on top of it and performing defect management for those standards, but it requires support from both the CD/DVD burner and the operating system. Many drives made today do not support Mount Rainier, and many older operating systems such as Windows XP and below, and Linux kernels older than 2.6.2, do not support it (later versions do). Essentially CDs/DVDs are a good way to record a great deal of information cheaply and have the advantage of being readable by most standalone players, but they are poor at making ongoing small changes to a large collection of information; flash drives' ability to do this is their major advantage.

Particularly with the advent of USB, external hard disks have become widely available and relatively inexpensive. As drive capacity increases, external hard disk drives cost less per megabyte than flash drives, and are available in much larger capacities. Some hard drives support alternative and faster interfaces than USB 2.0 (e.g. IEEE 1394 and eSATA). For writes and consecutive sector reads (for example, from an unfragmented file), most hard drives can provide a much higher sustained data rate than current NAND flash memory.

Unlike solid-state memory, hard drives are susceptible to damage by shock, e.g., a short fall, have limitations on use at high altitude, and, like all magnetic media, are vulnerable when exposed to strong magnetic fields, although shielded by their casing. Hard drives are usually larger and heavier than flash drives in terms of overall mass, although hard disks are often less weighty per unit of storage. Hard disks also suffer from file fragmentation which can reduce access speed.

All USB flash drives can have their contents encrypted using 3rd party disk encryption software such as FreeOTFE and TrueCrypt, which can be used without installation. The executable files can be stored on the USB drive, together with the encrypted file image. The encrypted partition can then be accessed on any computer running the correct operating system, although may require administrative rights on the host computer to access data.

Other flash drives allow the user to configure secure and public partitions of different sizes, and offer hardware encryption.

Newer flash drives support biometric fingerprinting to confirm the user's identity. As of mid-2005^[update], this was a relatively costly alternative to standard password protection offered on many new USB flash storage devices. Most fingerprint scanning drives rely upon the host operating system to validate the fingerprint via a software driver, often restricting the drive to Microsoft Windows computers. However, there are USB drives with fingerprint scanners use controllers that allow access to protected data without any authentication.^[27]

Some manufacturers deploy physical authentication tokens in the form of a flash drive. These are used to control access to a sensitive system by containing encryption keys or, more commonly, communicating with security software on the target machine. The system is designed so the target machine will not operate except when the flash drive device is plugged into it. Some of these "PC lock" devices also function as normal flash drives when plugged into other machines.

Flash drives present a significant security challenge for large organizations. Their small size and ease of use allows unsupervised visitors or unscrupulous employees to smuggle confidential data out with little chance of detection. Equally, corporate and public computers alike are vulnerable to attackers connecting a flash drive to a free USB port and using malicious software such as keyboard loggers or packet sniffers. To prevent this, some Antivirus software companies have designed specific applications to protect computers from the spread of malware via USB flash drives.

Also it is possible to run a solution that has been specifically designed to run from a USB flash drive. This kind of solution prioritises the protection of the USB flash drives and protects any sensitive data contained on USB flash drives from infected malware residing on any computer that the USB flash drive is attached to.

Alternatively some organizations simply forbid the use of flash drives altogether, and some computers are configured to disable the mounting of USB mass storage devices by ordinary users; others use third-party software to control USB usage. In a lower-tech security solution, some organizations disconnect USB ports inside the computer or fill the USB sockets with epoxy.

By August 2008, "USB flash drive" or simply "UFD" had emerged as a de facto standard term for these devices,^{[citation needed]} and most major manufacturers^[who?] use similar wording on their packaging, although potentially confusing alternatives (such as memory stick) or USB memory key still occur. The myriad different brand names and terminology used, in the past and currently^[update], make UFDs more difficult for manufacturers to market and for consumers to research. Some commonly-used names actually represent trademarks of particular companies, such as Cruzer, TravelDrive, ThumbDrive, and Disgo.

Semiconductor corporations have worked to reduce the cost of the components in a flash drive by integrating various flash drive functions in a single chip, thereby reducing the part-count and overall package-cost.

Flash drive capacities on the market increase continually. As of 2008^[update] few manufacturers continue to produce models of 256 MB and smaller; and many have started to phase out 512 MB capacity flash memory. High-speed has become a standard for modern flash drives and capacities of up to 64 GB have come on the market.^[28]

Lexar is attempting to introduce a USB FlashCard ^{[29] [30]}, which would be a compact USB flash drive intended to replace various kinds of flash memory cards. Pretec introduced a similar card, which also plugs into every USB port, but is just one quarter the thickness of the Lexar model ^[31] SanDisk has a product called SD Plus, which is a SecureDigital card with a USB connector.^[32]

SanDisk has also introduced a new technology to allow controlled storage and usage of copyrighted materials on flash drives, primarily for use by students. This technology is termed FlashCP.

• Disk enclosure
• File synchronization
• Live USB
• PHILM
• Portable application
• Solid-state drive
• Sneakernet
• USB Flash Drive Alliance
• Universal Flash Storage
• Secure USB Drive

Wikimedia Commons has media related to USB flash drive.

• Singapore firm wins patent on thumb drive
• USBee.